The Quarterback Next Door novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Tape Line

My mother had three rules, and she taught them to Cade in the attic at one in the morning with her arms folded.

"One. The door stays open."

"Two. The daybed stays a daybed."

"Three. If either of you is awake after midnight, you're awake quietly."

She was still in her scrubs.

She'd driven Cade to the emergency room for his hands, waited three hours, and brought him home with prescription cream and a bag of paper-wrapped gauze.

Now she stood between the two beds and looked at both of us.

"I know it's a strange situation," she said.

"I know what happened at that rally."

"Demi told me."

I hadn't, exactly.

Half the hospital staff had a niece at Brantley High, and my mother had heard it from a respiratory therapist.

"But you two are eighteen, and you are adults, and I trust you."

"I also work nights."

"So I have a lot of imagination about what could happen between ten and six."

"Mom," I said.

"What? I'm being honest."

"Mrs. Eastwick," Cade said, "nothing is going to happen."

He said it fast and flat, staring at the floor.

I looked away from him so no one could see my face.

"Good," my mother said, and kissed the top of his head again.

"Goodnight, baby."

"Demi, be nice."

Her feet creaked down the attic stairs, and the stairwell light clicked off.

For a while neither of us said anything.

The attic ran the length of the house under the slanted roof.

My bed sat under the east window with the film photos I'd pinned up since sixth grade.

The daybed my cousin left behind stood against the opposite wall, eight feet away, with a faded quilt my grandmother made.

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